Line Dried
by valentine
Summary: A little CJ/Josh banter about laundry and such things


Title: Line Dried  
Author: valentine  
Disclaimer: These guys are so not mine, but you already knew that. I don't know if there are actually Baskin Robins' in DC, but if there's not there sure should be. Two little spoilers, one for The Women of Qumar and one for The Leadership Breakfast.   
Rating: PG  
Feedback: is better than ice cream.  
  
Extra big thanks to Samihail (N.) for the fantastic beta.   
  
  
  
Line Dried  
~  
  
  
CJ turned to pull the apartment door closed behind her and patted her pocket to make sure she remembered her key. She hefted the basket and turned down the hall.   
  
  
"CJ!" his voice drifted through the lobby, catching her as she was balancing the heavy basket against her hip, trying to free one hand to reach for the door.   
  
  
Josh sauntered up and reached for the basket. "What're you doing?" he asked, taking the load from her.  
  
  
"The flamenco," she answered, yanking the heavy door open. "What does it look like I'm doing?"  
  
  
"Kind of looks like laundry."   
  
  
"Well give that man a gold star." she opened the door and followed him into the small laundry room.  
  
  
Josh dropped the basket with a resounding thud and shook his head as a balled up pair of socks tumbled from the pile, falling onto the concrete floor.  
  
  
CJ smiled at him and carefully began picking through the soiled clothes, sorting the loads into two open washers.  
  
  
"So, what're you doing?"  
  
  
"It's called sorting Josh," she answered, not looking up from her work.  
  
  
"No, I mean why are you doing this?"  
  
  
"So the colors don't bleed," with her head still down she let the smirk play on her lips.  
  
  
"No, wait," he placed one hand on his hip and brought his other hand in front of his body to gesture at their surroundings. "You know what I mean. You have a perfectly good washing machine in your place. What, you just felt like slumming it?"  
  
  
"I HAD a perfectly good washer," she shrugged and turned to add detergent to the first machine.   
  
  
"What happened?"  
  
  
"I'm not really sure, all I know is that it was suddenly possessed and now sounds strangely like it's running a whole litter of kittens through the spin cycle."  
  
  
"Want me to take a look?"  
  
  
She snorted in laughter as she turned to look at him, "what're you going to do, threaten it like a Republican and see if it'll straighten up?"  
  
  
"Hey! I know a thing or three about machines."  
  
  
"Like what."  
  
  
"Well, I know how to plug them in, and well...okay so I know one thing about machines. It was a gesture CJ, I thought you'd just, you know, appreciate the effort."  
  
  
Still laughing she inserted the quarters into the slots and started the washing machines. Turning, she put her hands behind her and propelled herself up. She settled on the machine, and turned to find a smiling Josh staring at her.  
  
  
"So, what brings you here, Josh?"  
  
  
"Leo caught me on the way out," he waved the manilla folder in his hand, "asked me to drop these off."  
  
  
"Numbers?"  
  
  
"Yeah."  
  
  
"How do they look?" she asked, reaching for the envelope.  
  
  
"Good for the President in the East, good for Hoynes in the South, and bad for all of us in the West."  
  
  
"Mad cow? Still?"  
  
  
Josh nodded, running his hand through his hair.  
  
  
"It wasn't even a real case," CJ pulled the contents of the folder out, laying them on her lap.  
  
  
"Doesn't really matter, people are still wary. They're coming around, just not as fast as we'd hoped."  
  
  
"It was the right thing to do."  
  
  
"Nobody's saying it wasn't, it just couldn't have come at a worse time."  
  
  
"So what're we doing?"  
  
  
"Tomorrow you're going to announce a bill for a one year increase in subsidies for corn and soy bean growers and a relaxation on property taxes for ranchers that agree to cull their herds by at least twenty five percent."  
  
  
"That'll help?"  
  
  
"There's no demand right now. And since we can't really manufacture that we'll go at it from the other side. We've got to get the market back on its feet."  
  
  
"Okay."  
  
  
Beneath her she felt the washing machine stop. Jumping down from her perch she opened two of the dryer doors and began shoveling clothes across the aisle. Josh hopped down and opened the second washer to help her complete the transfer.   
  
  
She slammed the doors, plunked quarters into the machine, and set the cycle for 70 minutes.   
  
  
"Okay, let's go," she turned, walking out of the laundry room, heading for the main entrance of her building.  
  
  
Startled, Josh rushed to catch up with her, "What about your clothes?"  
  
  
"They'll be fine."  
  
  
"You aren't worried someone's going to take them?"  
  
  
"Josh, look at me, I'm an Amazon. What're the chances that another six foot, skinny girl is going to wander into my building and stumble across my clothes."  
  
  
"There are plenty of six foot men around."  
  
  
"Seriously, if a six foot, skinny guy goes in and steals my clothes, well, more power to him. He'll probably look better in them then I do," she pushed the door to the street open, "besides the building's locked, so if it is one of my neighbors I think I'll be able to ferret them out."  
  
  
"Okay," Josh relented and followed her out onto the street. "So where're we going?"  
  
  
CJ stopped briefly at an intersection and, after looking both ways, stepped into the street. Over her shoulder she answered him with a smile, "Baskin Robins."  
  
  
~  
  
  
"So how'd your visit go?"   
  
  
"Good," she dipped the spoon into her banana split and shivered, wondering why ice cream places always seemed to be heavily air conditioned. "My dad was ecstatic to have two out of the three of us there at the same time."  
  
  
"You and Michael?"  
  
  
"Yeah, Tim couldn't get away. Some big deal or other."  
  
  
"That's too bad."  
  
  
"Yeah," her voice was quiet at first but suddenly broke into a resounding laugh.  
  
  
Josh looked across his own cup of ice cream at her, confused, "what?"  
  
  
"Tim called the last day I was there. My dad was so upset Tim couldn't make it, he actually threatened to go up there next time and forcibly remove him from the office."  
  
  
Josh laughed with her but she knew he didn't get the joke.  
  
  
"My dad is like five foot ten Josh."  
  
  
"I've met him."  
  
  
"Well Tim's got a good six inches on him, not to mention about 60 pounds!"  
  
  
"You're dad's pretty spry, you know, for his age and all."  
  
  
"Yeah," her laugh echoed in the small ice cream parllor.  
  
  
"So it was good, huh?"  
  
  
"It was really very nice," she leaned forward on the table, staring intently at her dessert and pushed stray strands of hair behind her ears. She ducked her head and hoped for a minute that Josh would just let it lie.  
  
  
"So, what?" he broke the silence, his voice laughing and serious at the same time, "You got your Amazon stature from you mom?"  
  
  
"Yeah," she forced herself to look up and smile at him, "everyone always thought she was taller than me until they got us back to back, you know. I beat her by an inch."   
  
  
Her mother always held herself in such a way that she appeared to tower over a room. Marie Cregg could walk in and immediately command an audience. On particularly bad days, when she'd be standing in front of an unforgiving press corps, CJ wished she'd paid more attention to how her mother did that.  
  
  
Josh fidgeted in the silence, stirring his now melted parfait around with the bright pink untensil. She knew he wanted to ask about her mother. She also knew he wouldn't push her. Sometimes, he really was very sweet.  
  
  
"She's good, you know. She's doing well."  
  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
  
"Yeah. Michael and I went to sit with her for a while. She looked good."   
  
  
The most disconcerting thing about all of this, CJ often thought, was that despite being ill Marie still looked so much like the mother she remembered. Sometimes she wished that as the Alzheimer's took her mother's mind it would also take her body. As it was, CJ was left with this woman that bore no similarity to her mother except in the features of her face.  
  
  
She scooped the last bit of ice cream out of her cup and let the spoon linger in her mouth. After a moment she brought her gaze back to Josh.  
  
  
"Shall we?" She gestured to the door. Josh offered his elbow and they exited together, arm in arm.  
  
  
~  
  
  
The buzzer from one of the dryers was ringing loudly in the small room as they entered.  
  
  
CJ pulled open the door of the machine and reached in to check for any lingering dampness. Satisfied that they were dry, she began pulling items out.  
  
  
She motioned to Josh as the second buzzer sounded, "could you get those?"  
  
  
"Oh, yeah, sure."  
  
  
She turned back to her machine and withdrew a second sweater. Pressing the warm weave against her body she realized how chilly it had been outside. She pulled it over her head, pausing to disentangle an ear ring./p  
  
  
"Uh, CJ?"  
  
  
"Yep."  
  
  
"Maybe we should switch dryers."  
  
  
"Josh, just fold them as neatly as you can..."  
  
  
"CJ...you do realize that you're asking me to fondle your undergarments, don't you?"  
  
  
Mentally she kicked herself. She hadn't even given it a thought when she'd started in on the first machine.  
  
  
Quickly covering her chagrin with a smirk she turned to face him.  
  
  
"First of all, I'm asking you to fold, not fondle. Second, I thought I was doing you a favor. Judging by the state of your love life this is probably the closest you've been to a lady's unmentionables in a couple years now."  
  
  
"Ah," Josh yelped as he placed a hand over his heart, feigning indignance, "you wound me, CJ."  
  
  
She moved to the second dryer, pushing him out of the way.  
  
  
"Go...fold sweaters," she motioned to the pile she'd already started.  
  
  
"Ah-kay," Josh leaned in to retrieve an item from the machine. "Anyway, you're wrong."  
  
  
"Am I?"  
  
  
"I got to see Donna's last January."  
  
  
"Josh!" her voice was a near yell as she turned to face him, her eyes wide.  
  
  
He took one look at her face and immediately began backpedaling,"Wait...No...No, absolutely...See it was this thing with Sam and Donna and Leo and..."  
  
  
"Joshua Lyman!"  
  
  
Pausing, he ran his hand through his unruly hair and tried again.  
  
  
"Wow, that sounded...bad. No, see, it was this stupid thing with Karen Cahill. Leo needed..."  
  
  
CJ finally took pity on him and waved to interrupt, "I know."  
  
  
Josh looked at her quizzically.  
  
  
"Donna told me about it," CJ laughed as she remembered the horrified look on Donna's face when the younger woman came into her office to explain exactly why Josh had been holding her underwear. "She was mortified."  
  
  
"So you were just yanking my chain back there."  
  
  
"Pretty much."  
  
  
Josh picked up a stray sock and threw it at her, "I so don't deserve this."  
  
  
"Hey, you're the one who got all googly eyed at the sight of my panties."  
  
  
"I was NOT googly eyed!"   
  
  
CJ laughed as the red crept up from under Josh's collar, coloring his face.  
  
  
"Maybe just a little, tiny bit," Josh admitted, under his breath. Then laughing too, he grinned smugly over at her, "but they're really very nice undies."  
  
  
CJ swallowed her laughter and looked at him hard, "Okay, we so need to end this conversation like right now."  
  
  
They both sobered for a minute. But neither could hold back the laughter very well.   
  
  
CJ had finished folding her load and placed it neatly in the basket. Moving to Josh's side she reached into his dryer and began folding. This had always been her favorite part of doing the laundry. Sometimes when she was little she would go outside and help her mother take in clothes from the line. She would help Marie fold the vast sheets and soft towels and place them all neatly in their baskets. And afterwards, on summer evenings they would sit outside on the stoop, back to back, CJ reading her small children's books while her mother read her own.  
  
  
Taking another shirt from the dryer she turned to regard Josh.  
  
  
"When I was a kid I always loved to hang the laundry on the line."  
  
  
"Why?"  
  
  
"I liked the smell," she shrugged. The soft summer breezes in Napa had always blown the sheets and towels around like kites. The clothes would come off the line sun warmed and smelling of juniper berries and grape leaves.  
  
  
"I guess you can't really do that in D.C., huh? Between the weather and the pollution you'd probably end up smelling like Dupont Circle."  
  
  
"You want to know the major con for winning reelection?"  
  
  
"There's a con?" he asked, semi-jokingly.  
  
  
"Oh, one or two," she ignored his pained look. "If we win, I'll have to suffer through four more years of machine dried laundry."  
  
  
Josh turned to her and seeing the smile in her eyes, burst out laughing.  
  
  
"Hey! I'm serious!"  
  
  
"Whatever."  
  
  
"Trust me Josh," she brought her hand up, her index finger resting on his chest, "once you've experienced line dried wash, you'll never go back."  
  
  
He laughed again, and she couldn't keep the straight face going. The smile spread across her face until they were both grinning ridiculously.  
  
  
Placing the last shirt in the basket, Josh hefted the load.  
  
  
"Shall we?" he asked.  
  
  
CJ opened the door for them and they proceeded out across the lobby, making their way back to her apartment.  
  
  
~  
  
  
Two months later, the morning after President Bartlet swept the general election, CJ wandered into her office elated. She sat at her desk, putting down her bag and folders and removing the coffee cup she had clenched between her teeth. There, on her desk next to Gail's bowl, was a box with a large yellow ribbon obscuring its surface. A simple folded note card peeked out from under the bow. Opening it she recognized the distinctive scrawl.  
  
  
'Claudia Jean-Couldn't do much about the weather or pollution. Maybe these will do the trick-Josh.'  
  
  
Tossing the card aside, she grabbed at the bow which came off easily in her hand. Looking at the box for a long minute she suddenly burst out laughing. There, on her desk, was a box of Bounty Dryer Sheets... Summer Breeze scented.  
  
~  
~ 


End file.
